197 Facts About George Santos

George Anthony Devolder Santos was born on July 22,1988 and is an American former politician and convicted felon.

George Santos served as the US representative for from January to December 2023 when he was expelled from Congress.

George Santos had run for the seat in 2020 as a Republican, but was defeated by incumbent Democratic representative Tom Suozzi.

George Santos admitted to having lied about his education and employment history, while his disclosures about his business activities, income, and personal wealth were inconsistent with one another.

Further, George Santos had not disclosed his criminal history or the existence of lawsuits against him.

George Santos was sworn in as a member of the House in January 2023, but faced ongoing media scrutiny as well as demands for his resignation from members of both parties.

George Santos is the first member of the House expelled without having previously been convicted of a crime or having fought for the Confederacy.

George Santos is the sixth member of the House to be expelled and the first Republican.

George Santos pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud in August 2024.

George Santos was sentenced to 87 months in prison on April 25,2025.

George Anthony Devolder Santos was born on July 22,1988, to Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder and Gercino Antonio dos Santos Jr.

George Santos's maternal grandparents, Paulo Horta Devolder and Rosalina Caruso Horta Devolder, were born in Brazil.

George Santos later moved to New York City, working as a housekeeper, cook, and nanny.

George Santos has claimed dual citizenship in the US and Brazil.

George Santos has said his family was poor during his childhood, living in a rat-infested basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, near a Brazilian immigrant enclave in Astoria.

George Santos remained close to his mother and maintained infrequent contact with his father.

Around 2008, George moved to Niteroi in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area, where his mother, Fatima, was then living, and lived there until 2011, although acquaintances of Santos from that period are unsure whether he lived in Brazil or merely visited.

George Santos told people his family had money because his father was a high-paid executive in New York.

Two former acquaintances said that he competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants in 2008 using the drag name Kitara Ravache, with one saying that George Santos began dressing in drag in 2005.

Manoel Antiqueira, who performs in drag as Eula Rochard, recalls George Santos returning from a 2007 trip to the US with expensive materials for a dress that were not available in Brazil at the time.

From October 2011 to July 2012, George Santos worked as a customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network in College Point, Queens.

The New York Times verified that sometime after 2013, George Santos worked for HotelsPro, a subsidiary of Turkey-headquartered MetGlobal.

In early 2016, George Santos moved to Orlando, Florida, where HotelsPro was opening an office.

George Santos registered to vote and changed his driver's license to his Florida residence.

George Santos has worked for LinkBridge Investors, a company that states that it "connects investors with fund managers".

George Santos's 2019 campaign disclosure form and a company document list him as a vice president, but that same year, the company president testified in a lawsuit that Santos was a freelancer who worked on commission.

In January 2020, shortly after launching his first campaign for Congress in November 2019, George Santos began working for Harbor City Capital, a Florida-based alternative investment firm.

In June 2020, during his first run for Congress, Santos opened an office for Harbor City Capital in Manhattan and became the firm's New York regional director.

George Santos was not named in the lawsuit, and he has denied knowledge of the fraud.

In 2020, George Santos claimed to be managing $1.5 billion in funds for Harbor City, with a fixed yield of 12 percent and an internal rate of return of 26 percent.

An investor said George Santos called him after the SEC suit was filed, crying that he had lost a million dollars of his own money as a result.

Around the time he is reported to have left Harbor City Capital, George Santos founded a limited liability company called the Devolder Organization, and his reported personal income rose substantially.

George Santos had no public presence when major media investigations commenced, and Santos has given inconsistent explanations of its business.

On financial disclosure forms, George Santos called the organization a "capital introduction consulting" firm.

George Santos said that its accountant had missed the annual filing deadline.

George Santos listed himself as the registered agent for the LLC and listed Florida as his state of residence.

The House Ethics Committee's investigation found that George Santos incorporated the LLC in May 2021, although he reported income from it on his 2020 income tax return.

The committee found that when George Santos applied for a business account in May 2021, he told the bank that the organization made $800,000 in net profit every year and grossed $1.5M; his May 2022 campaign financial disclosure said that the company's assets were in the $1M to $1.5M range.

The organization's 2021 financial statements showed $614 of income and over $14,000 of expenses, amounting to a loss exceeding $13,000, and at the time George Santos filed the 2022 disclosure, there was $4 in the company bank account.

George Santos was president of United for Trump, a small New York-based group supporting Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.

George Santos ran as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives in, against Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi, launching his campaign in November 2019.

George Santos raised funds, spoke to donor groups, and attended a phone-banking session at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump's children; his efforts impressed party officials.

George Santos bought entire tables at New York Young Republican events.

When reporters pressed him about living outside the district, George Santos claimed an address that turned out to be his campaign treasurer's.

George Santos refused to accept his 2020 defeat and falsely claimed that the vote totals had been manipulated.

George Santos began raising money and hiring additional staff for a recount, insisting that half the Democratic ballots should have been discarded.

George Santos refused to leave the orientation session for new members of Congress even after his opponent's victory was certified.

George Santos spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally the day before the January 6,2021, attack on the Capitol, telling the crowd that the election he lost by 13 percentage points in 2020 was stolen from him.

George Santos later said he was "never on Capitol grounds" on January 6, called it a "sad and dark day", and acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

Shortly after his loss to Suozzi, George Santos formed GADS PAC, a leadership PAC, and began raising money to run for Congress again.

Late in the year, George Santos's campaign commissioned a vulnerability study, which revealed significant issues.

George Santos defeated Zimmerman by 20,420 votes, flipping the district and helping Republicans retake the House.

George Santos admitted to lying about his education and employment history, while his financial disclosures were inconsistent.

The George Santos campaign announced in April 2023 that he would seek re-election in 2024.

In November 2023, after the House Ethics Committee's report made further fraud allegations against George Santos, he reversed course and announced that he would not seek re-election.

Joseph Cairo, the chair of the Nassau County Republican Party, called for George Santos to resign, saying that he had "disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople".

George Santos refused to resign, and kept the support of Republican House leadership, including former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, House majority leader Steve Scalise, and Representative Elise Stefanik, who relied in part on George Santos's vote to support their very narrow House majority.

George Santos was assigned to the committees on small business and space, science, and technology.

In 2023, George Santos voted in favor of the key bills supported by the House Republican leadership.

Democrats said that Republicans, who had informally criticized George Santos, should have no problem with a censure vote.

Roll Call reported in July 2023 that George Santos's office lagged behind those of members from neighboring districts in handling constituent service requests.

George Santos was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.

George Santos refused to support Steve Scalise as McCarthy's replacement, since the Louisiana congressman had not personally sought Santos's support.

In May 2023, after George Santos was indicted on federal charges, Robert Garcia and other House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel George Santos from the House, which required a two-thirds vote, or 290 votes, in favor.

George Santos said the result was a victory for due process and dismissed the resolution as a political stunt by his colleagues anxious about their re-election prospects in 2024.

George Santos said he would "wear it like a badge of honor", called Guest a "pussy" and said that no one from Mississippi was going to push a New Yorker out of Congress.

George Santos said it was hypocritical of the House to expel him.

George Santos is the sixth member of the House to be expelled, the only Republican, and the only member expelled without first being convicted of a federal crime or having supported the Confederacy.

In 2023, George Santos attended a rally of supporters outside the Manhattan courthouse where Trump was arraigned on felony charges of falsifying business records.

On December 19,2022, after George Santos had been elected to Congress but before he had taken office, The New York Times reported that he had lied about many aspects of his biography.

George Santos admitted to the Post that he had lied about graduating from college and working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

George Santos was raised as a Catholic and has identified himself as a Catholic.

George Santos did not otherwise make much mention of his purported Jewish ancestry during his 2020 run, but referred to it frequently in 2022 when all the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to replace Suozzi were Jewish.

The former roommate corroborated a claim that George Santos previously joked online about Adolf Hitler killing Jews and Blacks.

George Santos's maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, not in Ukraine or Belgium.

In 2023 media appearances, George Santos claimed that his claim to Jewish ancestry was vindicated by DNA test kits; however, he did not reveal the DNA information.

George Santos said on a May 2023 podcast that he was raised Catholic but considered himself a "member of the tribe" because his mother's ancestry was predominantly Jewish.

George Santos said he had many Jewish friends among his constituents and went to Shabbat dinners "more often than most".

In November 2023, George Santos reportedly said that he was "finishing getting the last pieces" of evidence that his grandparents, after emigrating to Brazil, had forged documents that enabled them to "blend in and all of that".

In 2020, George Santos claimed that he was biracial and that his Brazilian-born father had Angolan roots.

In 2019 and 2020, George Santos said that as a child, he attended the Horace Mann School, an elite preparatory school in the Bronx, before withdrawing because of family hardship.

George Santos's biographer wrote that although George Santos has retracted claims about his higher education, he remained adamant about having attended Horace Mann despite the complete absence of evidence supporting this claim.

George Santos falsely claimed to hold a bachelor's degree in finance and economics from Baruch College and to have graduated near the top of his class.

George Santos's claimed period of attendance overlapped with his time in Brazil.

George Santos's friends recall times when he claimed to be taking classes at Baruch but never seemed to study.

In January 2023, George Santos falsely told a Republican Party chairman that he had been a "star player" on the Baruch volleyball team, having won the league championship and defeated Yale University.

George Santos later admitted that he had never graduated from college.

Campaign documents claimed that George Santos held a master of business administration from New York University and that he had scored a 710 on the Graduate Management Admission Test.

George Santos added that he could not afford to attend college.

George Santos said he did not know the source of the spurious GMAT score in his resume published by the Nassau County Republican Committee.

Morgan asked why George Santos thought he could get away with lying about his education in a congressional election, and George Santos replied that no one had raised any questions about his claims during his 2020 campaign.

George Santos has used various aliases, including "Anthony Zabrovsky" and "Anthony Devolder".

George Santos told a roommate in late 2013 that he was a model who had worked at New York Fashion Week and would be appearing in Vogue.

George Santos has called himself a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" and said he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but neither company has any record of him.

George Santos's campaign website stated that he was "an associate asset manager in the real asset division" of Citigroup, but the company sold its asset management division in 2005, before his claimed period of employment.

George Santos worked as a customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network in College Point, Queens from October 2011 to July 2012, overlapping the time he said he worked at Citigroup.

George Santos later told the New York Post that his Citigroup claim was "a poor choice of words" and that a subsequent employer had been in "limited partnerships" with those companies.

Acquaintances and coworkers said that George Santos claimed his family was wealthy and had extensive real estate holdings in the US and Brazil.

George Santos repeated this claim during his 2022 congressional campaign, saying that he and his family owned 13 rental properties in New York.

George Santos later admitted to the Post that the claim was false and that he owned no properties as of the end of 2022.

Michael Cohl, Spider-Man's lead producer, denied that George Santos was involved with the show.

George Santos was living in Brazil in 2011 when the show opened, and his alleged time as producer overlaps his employment at Dish Network.

In March 2022, George Santos told Newsday that he left Whitestone because of an alleged January 2021 vandalism incident.

George Santos was registered to vote at the Whitestone address during his congressional campaigns, but did not appear to live there.

George Santos's landlord said he moved out of the Whitestone residence in August 2022, leaving $17,000 in damages, but records showed he was still registered there when he voted that November.

George Santos told reporters he planned to move to Oyster Bay, Nassau County, but he and his partner apparently moved into a house in Huntington, Suffolk County in August 2022.

George Santos told the Post the house was his sister's, but The New York Times later found she lived in Elmhurst.

Five years later, George Santos claimed he and his partner had found stones and eggs thrown at their Whitestone apartment after they returned to it from a party at Mar-a-Lago.

George Santos did not provide a police report of the incident.

In October 2023, George Santos told the Times that a few months earlier, his niece had vanished from a Queens playground, only to be found 40 minutes later in the company of two Chinese men.

George Santos claimed to suspect that the incident was retaliation for his opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.

In September 2023, George Santos filed his personal financial disclosures 20 months late.

George Santos personally profited $28,000 from repayments of those loans.

In March 2023, George Santos reportedly brokered a $19 million yacht sale between two major campaign contributors.

Many donors were linked to Chinese billionaire Miles Guo, whom George Santos has publicly supported.

Two campaign aides told the Times that staff were increasingly concerned during the campaign that George Santos was more interested in spending the $3million raised for the race "frivolously" than on winning the election.

The October 2023 indictment suggests that at least $11,000 in spending on luxury items was money obtained through credit card fraud and identity theft, by George Santos allegedly using donors' credit card information without their knowledge or consent, representing himself as them, and diverting those funds to a company he controlled.

Charges for a taxi and hotel in Las Vegas were made to the campaign during a time when George Santos said he was there for his honeymoon.

George Santos spent $6,000 of it at Ferragamo, withdrew $1,000 in cash from a Queens ATM and, later, $800 at a casino.

George Santos continued to spend campaign money lavishly even after being expelled from the House.

George Santos's FEC filing for the last quarter of 2023 reports a $1,300 expense at the Capitol Hill Club, a private Republican social club, on December 4, three days after his expulsion.

The address George Santos's campaign gave for that contribution, like some of the donations George Santos reported, was apparently fictitious, this one in the Florida Panhandle.

Campaign finance lawyer Brett Kappel speculated that the failure to share the money might indicate that George Santos's campaign was using the JFC to evade campaign contribution limits.

George Santos noted that although Santos's campaign treasurers had both filed termination reports with respect to the JFC earlier in 2023, the FEC had not obliged by mid-April, suggesting that the JFC may be the subject of complaints to the commission.

George Santos appointed Il Bacco's owner, Giuseppe "Joe" Oppedisano, along with his daughter, the restaurant's manager, to his campaign's "Small Business for George Santos" Coalition; Oppedisano in turn donated $6,500 to his campaign and its associated PACs.

In July 2021, George Santos loaned GADS PAC $25,000, five times what it had on hand at the time.

George Santos had effectively arranged for his campaign contributors to repay the loan.

Similarly, none of the $30,000 in repayments to George Santos were actually made.

In January 2023, the CLC filed a complaint with the FEC, alleging that George Santos used campaign funds for personal expenses, concealed the source of $700,000 he gave his campaign, and falsified expenditures.

In May 2023, after his indictment, George Santos filed new FEC paperwork listing himself as treasurer.

When George Santos filed new paperwork after announcing his 2024 candidacy, Boles was listed as treasurer.

Twelve donations, totaling $30,000 of the $338,000 George Santos reported raising from individual contributors, were from real people who denied having donated the amount claimed.

Shortly after Marks's guilty plea George Santos was indicted on charges related to the scheme.

In July 2023, Forte's campaign manager suspected Red Strategies USA, partly owned by George Santos, of inflating WinRed's fees in reports.

George Santos claimed that over 400 others, including Republican members, were similarly defrauded.

George Santos's campaign paid $50,000 in fees to Miele, who had called Republican donors falsely claiming to be then-House speaker Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff and asking them to support George Santos.

In mid-January 2023, McCarthy said though he had "some questions about it", he had "no idea" about the falsity of George Santos's resume when he ran, nor that Miele had posed as McCarthy's chief of staff, Dan Meyer.

Some contributors to the George Santos campaign said they were motivated to give to him because of his supposed Wall Street experience or his claim to be Jewish, both later found to be fictitious, and felt cheated in the wake of those disclosures.

Demauro, Forte's campaign manager, said that George Santos recommended that they hire the similarly-named Red Strategies USA as a consultant in 2021 without disclosing that he had an interest in the firm, and even seemed to have pretended to be meeting its principals, former Harbor Hill associates, for the first time along with Demauro.

George Santos recalls that Marks repeatedly ignored her requests for bank and account statements; her own paychecks were frequently late.

George Santos represented himself as its "managing partner" while signing one contract with another vendor; he used a RedStone email address in his capital introduction work.

George Santos was indicted five days later on charges of wire fraud related to the diversion of funds to RedStone under the pretense that it was to buy television advertising when in fact none of it was, or could have been.

In late 2020, after George Santos had lost the election to Suozzi, Marks and Tiffany George Santos established a PAC called Rise NY, which paid RedStone $6,000 in April 2022.

The House Ethics Committee, in reviewing bank records for Rise, RedStone and George Santos's businesses, found "numerous unreported transfers to and from the campaign bank account" during 2022.

Andrew Intrater, the financier who had lost most of the $625,000 George Santos persuaded him to invest in Harbor City, said his $175,000 contribution to Rise NY was underreported to the state by $95,000 until a later amended report.

Mother Jones reported at the end of February 2023 that despite no official connection to Rise, George Santos regularly solicited contributions to it and in some cases personally delivered checks from it, including two for $62,500 each to the Nassau County and Town of Hempstead Republican committees, suggesting that he had some role with Rise.

In late 2021, over $55,000 George Santos raised with the promise of registering voters was instead diverted to Outspoken Middle East, an LGBTQ news platform aimed at that region of the world.

Outspoken founder Charles Moran said he had approached George Santos asking for financial help; since the contribution was legal for Rise to have made, he accepted it.

Intrater told Mother Jones that he had only learned from them about the diversion and that George Santos had told him repeatedly during 2021 that contributions to Rise were being spent to build the Republican Party in New York.

When writing the checks, George Santos presented identification bearing his photo but the check owner's name.

George Santos later admitted to the theft in a message to the clerk and confessed to police before he was charged with check fraud in 2010.

George Santos was evicted from rented Queens properties three times in the mid-2010s over unpaid rent.

Yasser Rabello, a onetime roommate, described moving into the first apartment in December 2013 after befriending George Santos; it had only two bedrooms and one bathroom, and George Santos shared it with his mother, sister, then later his boyfriend and often another roommate.

George Santos signed a lease on an apartment in Whitestone in 2014.

In October 2015, a small claims court judge ordered George Santos to pay Peter Hamilton $5,000 plus interest to repay a loan Hamilton made to George Santos in September 2014 for moving expenses.

George Santos told the Post that his mother's illness had forced his family into debt at the time; as of December 2022 he had yet to pay the rent he owed, saying he "completely forgot about it".

George Santos claimed to have rescued over 2,500 animals as founder and operator of a charity called Friends of Pets United from 2013 to 2018.

George Santos told many people that FOPU was a legitimate charity, but it never received non-profit tax-exempt status from the IRS, was not registered as a charity with the state of New York, and never registered with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets as required of animal rescue groups from September 2017.

George Santos said in February 2023 that he "never handled the finances" of FOPU, although its volunteers and groups that dealt with FOPU said that he seemed to be the only person who did so.

In November 2017, George Santos was charged with theft by deception in York County, Pennsylvania, after bad checks were written to an Amish dog breeder from his account.

George Santos successfully argued that the signatures on the checks were not Santos's, and the case against Santos was dismissed in May 2021, after Santos ultimately paid the farmer who lodged the police report.

In January 2023, retired US Navy veteran Richard Osthoff and retired police officer Michael Boll accused George Santos of having stolen funds that were donated to a GoFundMe fundraiser.

GoFundMe banned George Santos, who had organized the fundraiser, at the end of 2016.

George Santos denied swindling Osthoff; in October 2023 he denied even knowing him to the Times, which reported having text messages suggesting otherwise.

FOPU held a 2017 fundraiser event, charging $50 per attendee, eventually raising $2,165, with George Santos controlling the money.

The veterinary technician said that George Santos was elusive and never gave her any of the proceeds, instead only giving excuses for not transferring the money.

The owner of a Staten Island pet store told the Times that, after a successful series of fundraisers, George Santos, known as Anthony Devolder to the store owner, asked the owner to make the check out to him personally rather than FOPU.

George Santos stopped working with him, believing he was either overpromising or skimming.

CBS has reported that George Santos's name came up in a 2017 international credit card skimming scheme perpetrated by Brazilians in Seattle.

At the time he said he declined to tell federal authorities as George Santos had threatened to report his Orlando roommates to immigration authorities, who were in the US illegally.

Myers alleged that George Santos had violated House rules by having him work as a volunteer for a week before his paperwork was processed.

Myers had said the incident occurred while he and George Santos were alone in the office going over mail from constituents.

However, witnesses told the committee that staff did not want someone from outside the office going over mail, and that George Santos had never been alone with Myers that day.

George Santos told them it was a Super PAC and that the money would buy TV ads to support his campaign.

At the arraignment the day the indictment was unsealed, George Santos pleaded not guilty and was granted pretrial release on a $500,000 bond with conditions, including surrendering his passport and restricting his travel to Long Island, New York City, and Washington, DC Afterwards, he told reporters that this was a "witch hunt" and that he was still running for reelection in 2024.

Five days after Marks's plea, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, alleging 10 additional felonies committed by George Santos including conspiracy against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, credit card fraud, and money laundering.

George Santos learned of the additional charges when questioned by reporters after leaving a House Republican Conference meeting where he said he had not had access to his phone.

George Santos called them "bullshit" and explained that he had not handled any of his campaign finance reports.

In May 2024, George Santos moved to have some of the charges dismissed.

George Santos was initially scheduled for sentencing on February 7,2025.

Peace said George Santos agreed not to appeal any sentence of less than eight years.

George Santos's lawyers attributed most of his actions to "a misguided desperation related to his political campaign, rather than inherent malice" and asked for the minimum sentence of two years.

Prosecutors noted that George Santos had yet to pay any of his court-ordered restitution.

Days before sentencing, George Santos said he was trying to make "some kind of a meaningful attempt" at it.

George Santos maintained that he was "genuinely remorseful", and would not ask Trump to pardon him as he did not expect that request to be granted.

George Santos was ordered to surrender by July 25,2025.

Steven Galanis, one of the co-founders of the website, said that George Santos's videos represented one of "the best launches that [the website] ever had".

Kimmel aired some of the videos on his show, after which George Santos demanded $20,000 for the right to broadcast, which Kimmel refused to pay.

George Santos announced in April 2024 that he would revive his Kitara drag persona for Cameo videos, promising to donate 20 percent of the proceeds to charity.

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation, one of the charities to which George Santos claimed proceeds from the Cameos would be donated, said he had not informed them of his plans prior to making his announcement.

George Santos later admitted the incident was staged to promote the podcast and that he had not intended for it to be uploaded.

George Santos was married to a woman from 2012 to 2019, despite previously being out, but lived with men he was involved with from 2013 on.

George Santos did not widely acknowledge his marriage to the woman, a Brazilian national, until it was reported in December 2022.

In statements acknowledging the marriage, George Santos said that he loved his then wife; however, he said that he had been comfortably and openly gay for at least the preceding decade, an assertion broadly supported by friends, former coworkers, and roommates.

George Santos did not deny the marriage, but George Santos was open about his romance with his then-boyfriend and told friends about it.

Four months later, George Santos filed a family-based immigration petition on his wife's behalf; it was approved in July 2014, typically seen as a sign that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services believed the marriage was valid.

In 2020, George Santos said he was living with a partner named Matheus Gerard, whom he has subsequently called his husband.